Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2008 17:07:41 -0500
From: fireflywatcher ford
Subject: Short Grass Prairie, Chapters Two and Three
SHORT GRASS PRAIRIE< CHAPTERS TWO AND THREE
by fireflywatcher- Phil Ford
fireflywatcher@gmail.com
The usual disclaimers apply. If you are under eighteen or sexual
content is illegal where you live, read no further.
This story is entirely fictional but I have tried to incorporate
historical elements to the best of my abilities. I reserve all rights
to the story to myself unless I give written permission. Just ask.
I appreciate any comments or suggestion, so please write. My skills are
limited.
Short Grass Prairie
CHAPTER TWO
by fireflywatcher- Phil Ford
I awoke with a start from a strange dream. I felt Dan's hairy chest
touching my back and my hand touched the fuzzy back I knew was Jake's,
but the smooth body pressed to me was unfamiliar. As the young Mexican
boy stirred at my movement, I realized who he was. The dim light from
the nearly full moon left the room in shadows. He turned to face me
and clutched me so tightly in both his arms I could hardly draw a
breath. Then he buried his face in my shoulder and began to weep. The
weep became stronger until he was bawling and sobbing, and I felt the
dampness of his runny nose. I pulled him with me to the foot of the
bed and out on the floor, moving us both to the kitchen. I grabbed a
flour sack towel and wiped his face. I kissed his forehead and lifted
a cup saying 'coffee' with a raised brow and he answered "Si". The
coals in the firebox only took a stir to bring the dry wood I added to
a blaze. I opened the tap that brought water from the boiler hoping it
still held some warmer water and after a moment, I filled the blue
speckled enamel pot. I cranked the grinder until I had enough ground
to make a pot and added it to the basket. Then, I set the pot on the
hottest grate. The glass knob in the lid would show me when the liquid
darkened enough to have the right taste and I waited.
"I'm Jim", I said pointing to my chest. "Luis", he answered in kind. I
took his hand and led him out on the porch for my morning piss and he
repeated my actions. I saw for the first time that skin Dan had told
me about. "That would never do for me", I thought to myself. "Just
looking at my shiny knob got me hard and if I couldn't see it, I might
never get hard at all." Luis looked over at my prick and gave me a
smile.
"Better dig deep in the back of the cupboard for that big pot", Jake
said, standing beside the stove with an empty cup in his hand. "This
pot won't make it around one time for all these men."
Jake made his trip out to the porch while I scrubbed the dust off the
big pot. I handed the grinder to Luis and made the motion to tell him
to grind some beans. I filled three cups from the small pot and moved
it away from the heat. Dan raced through grabbing himself a cup on the
way to the outhouse. "Sisters", Jake commented, "I remember what it
was like in his house with all those women. If you didn't make it to
the outhouse before they were up, you might end up doing your business
in the bushes. Your body gets used to these things, it expects
attention at a regular time."
I opened the tap again and the water from the boiler was still pretty
hot. I filled the big pot and set it on the hottest spot. Luis opened
the drawer of the grinder and looked up at me. "More", Jake answered
him and with a cup in his hand he motioned for a full cup of ground
beans. When Luis had the cup full I dumped it in the basket and handed
the cup back to him motioning for him to fill it again. I dropped the
stem into the pot and set the basket in place, and then I put the lid
on top, but this lid didn't have a clear glass knob. It would be check
or guess to move the pot from the heat before the coffee was too thick
to stomach. Seeing the color through a glass knob was easier.
Luis was jabbering full stream by the time Dan came back from the
outhouse. Jake and me didn't catch on to one word of it. We just
smiled at him and nodded. Dan listened for a while and turned to us.
"I learned me a little Spanish back in Milam County. If I get what
he's a saying, he was traveling with his family, headed up toward
Denver when he was six. The Comanche's caught them further north and
killed all of them except him. They kept him to raise Indian. He got
away last winter and made it to the county seat and has been there
ever since. People there was pretty mean to him. Ten years with the
Comanche is a long time", Dan explained. Luis gave Dan a peck on the
forehead and sat quietly drinking coffee after that.
"I bought a lot more land yesterday", Jake began explaining. "I
thought we needed a piece that was just Dan's and needed to get the
Comanche camp back plus some hunting ground for them so's we could
keep the peace. We ain't never had no trouble with them and when our
mom's and Jim's grandma Taylor got killed it was summer. Comanche's
ain't never been seen round here during the summer. They would of
burned the houses and barns if it was their doing, too."
"I got a good deal on the cheap, damn near free, cause the railroad is
coming through and got land grants to build the track", Jake
continued. "You know all the land in Milam County came from a Spanish
land grant and was over half the county in our families hands. Each of
the kids got three thousand acres when they were sixteen. I was
entitled to a share myself, but too young back then to get it so I
still have a claim on it. Dan has a piece due him and so do you, Jim.
The thing is, the land we get is heavy woods and would take a hell of
a lot of work to make it into farms or ranches. We have to get a claim
on it though before it's all deeded out cause when it's done, there
ain't no more to get. Granny and Paw-Paw, my mom and dad, sold their
pieces. Jims parents and grandparents sold theirs, too. That was
eighteen thousand acres at ten dollars an acre. They took the payment
in gold and bought this place for three cents an acre. We already got
more land than we can use. What I bought yesterday I paid five cents
an acre for half of and got the other half free as a land grant from
the railroad. I bought a mile wide strip on the far side of the river
up to three miles past where the Concho and Colorado split and then
back to the north from the Colorado to meet our northern boundary,
enough just on this side to equal half of what we have now. We'll save
the south side of the river for a Comanche hunting ground. These men I
brought will stay a month, surveying and running perimeter fence
around the whole place except where we have fence now. Their last week
they will just survey and put in posts to mark it out if they're not
able to finish it all. After today, they'll camp where they work and
we'll be left alone."
"What about those carpetbaggers in the new town?", I asked.
"They have to move every scrap of wood except the water tower and the
windmill over below Santa Ana Mountain where the railroad is running
their track. They have to buy what they could of got free, but think
they're getting their lives saved by not riling the Comanche and
getting the land here used as a down payment on what they buy."
A man cleared his throat and said, "Mr. Pearson, we'll be ready to get
to work after we have some of that good smelling coffee, if you don't
mind."
"Sure thing", Jake answered him. "Cups are right here (Jake pointed)
and there is plenty if we need to make more. I'll lead you to our
south east line when we head out."
We figured we'd get more work out of the men if we started them out on
a full belly. Luis started frying bacon. Dan stirred up biscuits. Jake
and I went to gather eggs. "Some English investor in the railroad took
over a million acres to our east and north", Jake told me. "He's going
to start bringing in people from over there to work it. I was only
intending to try and get that town moved but when I found out about
the Englishman, I didn't want us swallowed up by his dealings. I don't
expect his ranch to last. People don't know this country and how it
can be drought for several years. His damn people will be left here
though when he sells out and leaves. They won't have the price of the
fare to get back home. At least they ain't damn Yankees."
I had several hens sitting clutches and would move eggs to clutches or
start a new one when I gathered them if there were more than we
needed. I had a couple of dozen in the kitchen and hoped what we could
gather would be enough to feed everyone. I had to float test them to
make sure I wasn't getting any bad eggs.
Dan and me decided to ride along with Jake, leaving Luis behind to
find the feel of the place. Dan showed him the garden, the smokehouse,
the poultry yard, and the spring pond. He said he'd have food ready
when we returned. We led the men, with their wagons, to our south east
point, went upstream a ways to a shallow water crossing, and began a
ride down our new boundary on the south side of the river. At the
divide into two rivers we continued on up the south side of the
Concho. I pointed out the deep hole above the split to Dan, saying it
was my favorite swimming hole and the water ran clear, not like the
red muddy water carried by the Colorado. "Paw-paw said Coronado wrote
of finding gold nuggets as big as your fist in caves here along the
bank", I told Dan, "I've looked when I had time, but I ain't found any
damn gold yet." We turned north after reaching a point we thought
would be close to the new west line and kept riding north until again,
we reached the point we thought would be the north line. Turning east
at that point we were eventually in sight of the north fence which we
followed to it's end and came south through the unfenced area that
surrounded the Comanche camp. We'd never fenced that section because
the buffalo couldn't pass through the fence or would destroy it
trying, and that would cause trouble with the Comanche.
Luis was on his knees working a scrub brush over the tile floors when
we walked in. He had a meal fixed on the stove and began telling Dan
all the chores he'd tended to. He had a pitcher of milk he'd taken
from one of the cows, too, and had it sitting in cool water for us. I
took another pitcher and brought home brew up from the cellar. I'd
never drank milk that I could remember.
Luis had worked as a cooks helper for a Mexican woman in the county
seat. He'd learned a lot. All he'd cooked before that was Comanche
food. The trouble he'd had was because the woman was also a whore and
some of her customers took a liking to Luis. A drunk cowboy will fuck
anything that will hold still for a few minutes. A lot of them
preferred a boy to a woman in that way, too. They figured he didn't
deserve any pay for the fuck either, so free beat a cheap whore most
of the time. He was too small to stop it but he wasn't really small,
just growing and still thin and wiry like me. Jake saw what was
happening and brought him home to the ranch. We swam in the spring
pond that afternoon, laying on the drying rock, sipping whiskey and
beer when the mood struck us.
Luis asked if we could circumcise him, which was a shock. It seems
Paw-Paw and my Granddad Taylor had tried preaching to the Comanche.
About all that had sunk in was the idea that circumcision was a symbol
of the bond with god, marking them as his children. They'd taught the
Comanche how to do it after performing it on their chief, and then all
the men. The babies were done next and then the boys. Luis was new to
the band and it was decided he'd be circumcised when he was tested as
a warrior in his fourteenth summer, which fell right now. The
Comanche even referred to themselves as the Black Hand Band of the
Colorado Comanche, the Children of the Great Spirit and to Paw-Paw and
Granddad as the two white medicine men of winter camp. I don't think
the band name translated exactly to those names. Dan had learned to
do circumcision and agreed to do it. He sharpened a straight razor
enough to split hairs and heated it to red hot in a fire. Luis
prepared by getting as drunk as he could manage. Jake and me held Luis
still and Dan did a gentle smooth cut cauterizing it with the hot
blade in one motion. Luis never moved or made a sound. He drank more
after the deed was done until he passed out and we put salve with
golden seal on the cut and took him to bed.
The evening passed and the next morning was normal in every way. When
asked if he hurt, Luis said, "Only a little, it will be fine." A few
days later Luis asked another favor. He said he needed a warrior's
tattoo on his left shoulder so the Comanche wouldn't take him away
when they came to winter camp. The Black Hand Band used a small black
hand as their symbol. He said his should be a half black, half white
hand, but we had no white pigment, so we used a light yellow. What we
were calling a band was really more of a family group. There were
three main bands and several smaller bands. The winter camp Comanche
were part of a band called the buffalo eaters, the largest of all the
bands. "What the hell", Jake declared, "Let's all have one." So we
did. We all carried the same mark. Luis was even more excited by this
saying it showed a bond with the Comanche band and they would never
war against us and consider us kin. Luis was healed enough after a
week that even getting hard didn't hurt him. The scar was a fine hair
line barely visible.
When we got around to unloading Jakes wagon he'd brought a load of
glass jars and pots used to seal them so we could preserve some of the
vegetables from the garden. He had books with instructions. He brought
three big milk jugs and something called udder balm for the cow's
teats, too. He had some rolls of screen wire so we could keep bugs out
of the house and off the porch. Having the house screened off from the
bugs was something I couldn't conceive of before. I didn't know wire
like that existed. In the front they had our mail, an accordion, and
another guitar.
The survey and fence crew brought in their own cedar posts and two
inch stays placed between posts so we didn't have to do any cutting.
Jake negotiated for ten more men and near the end of the fourth week
all the fence was finished. We slaughtered a goat and gave them a
barbeque to show our thanks. Two days remained and just the two
surveyors stayed behind. Jake had them mark out a line for an
irrigation canal from our highest point on the river to the south
eastern line. He said we'd work on it over time so we could have some
fields in production during droughts. I figured if we had a drought
the river would go dry. He said we'd put a low dam to hold water that
would still feed the canal after the flow stopped and five spring fed
creeks would run into it, too.
Through the heat of August we slowed our pace and didn't do much
except check the herds from time to time. Melons ripened in a small
field and we put some back, down in the cellar for winter, before
turning the pigs in to eat the rest. We picked and shelled some
black-eyed peas from another plot the pigs would get and tried our
hand canning some. Tomatoes, peppers, and squash were still making in
the garden and Luis took to watering them to keep them producing. We
canned some tomatoes, too. One plot was left growing pumpkins, but it
would be picked and opened for the pigs later on.
Luis told us the Comanche were six weeks ride from our ranch the
summer my mom and grandmothers were killed. All that had been missing
were their wedding bands. The rest of the valuables on the place were
well hidden and never brought out. At the end of August after we
planted our fall garden, we went to the winter camp and planted one
for the Comanche. There was no sign left of the town then, just the
windmill, water tower, and a big tank that held water. Luis brought
paint and we climbed the tower, painting the Comanche symbols and our
own like our tattoos. Rains began a week or so later and continued
through October. It had rained occasionally up until August, but just
hard thunder storms that would pass through quickly. The fall rains
were gentler and long lasting. The rain brought the garden, our plots
of wheat, rye, oats, and barley up and had it all growing strong in no
time. Even the pastures of short grass prairie greened up for the
first time since spring.
The fall roundup held a record number of steers for us to sell. We
only sold the two year old steers and the green grass had them fat and
sassy. We branded the summer born calves and castrated the bull calves
when we worked them. With the balance returned to their pastures, the
four of us and the six dogs drove the two year old steers to the
county seat to sell to the buyer who'd ship them by rail to Fort
Worth. Old Jack with his pack frame on his back followed along behind
us. The total was over four hundred head and the price had jumped to
twenty dollars a head. Jake used part of that ordering twenty
windmills that would be delivered, guided to the ranch by one of the
men from the fencing crew. Jake ordered a few other things to be
delivered at the same time. We bought new revolver pistols and
repeating rifles in the event of trouble carrying the gold coin
remaining from the sale, home. Jack bore a load of ammunition and
quite a few bottles of whiskey.
Most of the fence on our north line and south line, in our pastures
surrounding Comanche camp were series of gates that could be left open
for the buffalo and the Comanche to pass through freely. Another fence
surrounded the camp. Driving the steers we'd passed through the south
line just above the river and opened all the gates. On the return trip
we went north to open those gates. Then we opened the gates around the
camp land, except what surrounded the garden there. The sand hill
cranes made a cloud above us in the sky, signaling it wouldn't be long
before both Comanche and buffalo arrived. Opening the last gate, a
lone warrior appeared on the horizon. We waited there and Luis went to
greet him when he rode up.
The warrior jumped from his horse and lifted Luis from the ground,
spinning him around and whooping for joy. They talked a few minutes
and joined us with Luis doing the talking for us. We bid Dan and Old
Jack goodbye for them to go home and have us a meal ready and took the
warrior to see the boundaries of the hunting ground we'd bought. As we
rode he told us the band of a hundred or so men, women, and children
was about a week behind him. He understood when we said men were
buying up all the land around us and thanked us for saving their
winter camp. He didn't like the boundaries but the land we kept for
his hunting ground was the river bottom and the area that held more
game than any other place around.
When we rode up to the house Dan was sitting on the porch looking mad.
"What did you cook?", I asked him.
"Fried chicken and gravy with taters and biscuits", he answered. "I
skinned the chickens and fed the leavings to the cats. I can't cook a
lot of things but I fry chicken pretty good."
"Why's Old Jack still standing there with everything on his back?", I asked.
"That damn mule will let me touch his head but if I start to go for
the pack he starts bellering and backs away every time."
"You got to scratch his ears first and talk to him sweet", I replied.
"He don't know he's a mule. He thinks he's a pet. He was orphaned and
I bottle raised him when I was a kid. I spoiled him rotten. If we
camp, he wants to bed down beside us, but his farts will wake the
dead. If you tie him away from you, he bellers all night and you don't
get no sleep. You can't win with that mule." Dan took the hint and got
Jack unpacked. "Jack hates coyotes something fierce, too. He'll chase
one until he looses sight of it and scatter what he's packing all over
hell and creation", I informed him.
Jake, Luis, and the warrior were at the barn unsaddling and putting
the horses up. I held Jack for Dan to get the pack frame and tack off
of him and led him and my horse to the barn to tend to them, too. When
I came back everyone was smiling and passing a bottle around. The
bottle was placed at the center of the table while we ate. I put
pitchers of beer out to drink and Luis put out one of milk.
"Luis said the warrior's name means 'Red Tailed Hawk' and we couldn't
pronounce it, so we'll call him 'Hawk'" Jake told me. I raised my
glass to him saying, "Hawk" and pointing to my chest saying, "Jim".
That carried around the table.
"Damn good chicken", I told Dan.
"Thanks", he replied. "I put the boiler on when I got here first
thing. The spring is too cold for bathing now", he continued. "I knew
we'd all want to get the road dirt off us. I fed the dogs, too."
When the dishes were washed and put away, we carried the open bottle,
a couple more bottles, and two pitchers of beer into the wash room.
We sat on the ledge while the basin filled but it was easy to see it
would hold the five of us. Hawk noticed my tattoo and slapped the palm
of his hand over it letting out a whoop. Looking around, he saw we all
had one and told Luis he wanted a second one like ours on his shoulder
beside his small black hand.
Luis had learned to speak English pretty well over the last couple of
months. We'd all learned a little Spanish, too.
"He wants some of your butt, too", Luis told me.
I took Hawk's hand and placed it on my ass, saying, "Feel you some
fine white boy ass there, Hawk."
He squeezed it a couple of times and ran his finger up my crack. He
sniffed the finger and then licked it, letting out a whoop afterward.
Then he took my hand and put it on his ass. I repeated what Hawk had
done but took my whole finger in my mouth and pushed it in and out
some which got another whoop from Hawk. He was rock hard now, so I
bent over and swallowed his prick. He was getting drunk and not used
to alcohol. It took a lot of work to make him spurt. By then the basin
was full and we all slipped down into the water. When the water
started getting cold and we were all wrinkled from sitting in it, Luis
took Hawk with him to one of the spare bedrooms for the night.
Luis and Hawk took off early the next morning. We three brought in
pumpkins during the morning and gathered firewood by the river for the
afternoon, bringing home five wagon loads to the wood house. We only
picked up dead fallen wood and did no cutting or chopping. Any large
limbs or trees could be cut up another day. Returning with the last
load we found Luis and Hawk with a slaughtered buffalo pulling it on a
sledge or travois, and four new buffalo calves led by ropes.
"I'm going to bottle feed them from the cow until she'll nurse them",
Luis explained. We'd shown him that the cows would nurse any calf that
drank their milk a few days because the milk made them smell like her
own calf. It was a good trick. He said he hoped to catch a few more
to nurse and in a few years we'd have buffalo that thought they were
cows. I got a good laugh out of that. Luis was quite serious at the
task. Every morning he'd ride out and look over the herds for cows
that lost their calves. He'd bring them back and pen them up, milk
them, and catch another buffalo calf. When he had fifty calves all
nursing on Angus cows he declared it enough for one year.
"Hell, if the Indians had known how to tame a calf, they could have
fenced the plains and ranched on their own", I reasoned. It was faulty
thinking, though.
Hawk continued to leave each morning and return each evening until the
band arrived. He spent a few nights with them and started the same
routine again.
The windmills were delivered without incident since the road passed by
our southern line along the river and out of sight of the Comanche
camp. The Comanche were warned to stay out of sight to keep the peace.
Jake had ordered equipment to make cheese, a hand agitated tub with a
roller wringer for washing clothes, and a machine that made ice, a
mystery to all of us. He'd ordered a box chest that you'd put blocks
of ice in to keep food cold in the kitchen, too. Jake was getting a
taste for gadgets. The ice machine and the windmills got stacked in a
corner of the barn.
The next few weeks we spent gathering pecans at the river joined by
Comanche women and some young braves brought by Hawk. It would take
all day to sack a wagon load of pecans, but a few Comanche gathered
firewood and Luis made trips all day carrying the wood to the winter
camp. At the end of the day our last load was dropping off pecans at
the camp and carrying ours home to the ranch. Only old women drying
buffalo meat and working hides while they watched over the small
children would be in the camp. The older children, women, and a few
young braves worked with us. The men were all gone on the hunt to
bring home more buffalo. Three braves began staying the night at the
ranch as Hawk did. We ended up selling a lot of the pecans, both ours
and the Comanche's, and the buffalo hides they didn't need. The money
bought them some supplies and most got put back and kept safe with our
gold. We celebrated Thanksgiving at the end of November even though it
wasn't an official holiday then. The Comanche had a moon festival
then, too, and we combined the two, taking a lot of food to the camp
to share with them. We'd just killed several hogs that we'd put up in
the smokehouse and carried some pork with us to the feast. Christmas
we celebrated only at the ranch.
Jake hired a well digger to put in the twenty wells out in the
pastures for the windmills and had an ice house built and a dairy
parlor built for the milk cows. He had troughs built by the windmills
that offered water to stock in four adjoining pastures. It was pure
luck we hit water in each spot, since most people would witch out the
water before they started digging anywhere. As each well and trough
was completed, we assembled the windmill for it, which bolted
together, and got it in place and running, filling the trough. When
the trough was filled we set the brake that stopped the blades from
turning and would have to check them and refill the troughs as the
water was used.
When the buffalo and the Comanche headed north in the spring, Hawk and
the three braves stayed at the ranch. Luis had caught up another fifty
buffalo calves before they left. Buffalo seemed to calve only twice a
year, in the spring and in the fall. Cows calved all through the year.
Spring roundup came in April and we sold over seven hundred, two year
old steers, this time. Jake stayed in town a day after we'd gone home
and I knew he was buying something again. He sent half the gold coin
from selling the steers, with me, so he had some sense about him. We
had Old Jack loaded down good, with a few bottles on his back, too. I
put the coins away first thing. It was easy to see we weren't hurting
a bit with that big metal box nearly full of coin sacks. The evening
passed with all of us drinking whiskey, eating, and bathing in the hot
water from the boiler. Jake missed out on one hell of a good time.
Hawk and the braves never went into town with us. They were getting
good at speaking English, they'd even chosen their own English names,
one calling himself Swift, another Tanner, and the third, Taylor. Hawk
and the three of them took a Spanish last name, Comacho, kind of a
misspelling of Camacho but sounding like Comanche to them. Luis took
the same last name since he didn't remember his own. We brought the
denims, boots, hats, and all the cowboy clothes so only their long
hair would hint they were Indian if other people came around. It would
save their fine leather leggings and beaded shirts from damage when we
worked the ranch, too. They all looked their finest not wearing a
stitch of clothes, by far.
We had the garden and all the field plots planted with nothing to
harvest for a while so each day we worked on the irrigation ditch.
Jake found us there in the afternoon on his way home. He was driving a
new team and wagon with only a couple of crates and barrels and his
horse tied to the back. "What did you buy?", I asked.
"Not much", he answered. "I got us a still and a couple of oak
barrels, and a few more guitars, a push button accordion. I spent the
rest buying all the land we could get that bordered what we have.
There ain't no more that connects to buy. I got our mail, too. Dan's
mom sold our places due us in Milam County and the payment is being
sent here. We got fifteen dollars an acre. Dan got a letter, too."
Dan hurried over to get his letter and read it. I was glad we were
done buying land. "We got room for another man?", Dan asked. "My
friend back home is widowed now. His wife died having twins and his
mom will care for them until they're bigger. He was married ten
months. He sold his place to his brother. He had two sections his
granddad left him, twelve hundred and eighty acres. He wants to make a
new start."
"Is he on the way?", Jake asked.
"Sure is", Dan answered. "The letter is post marked four days ago. It
comes by train now. It took me over a week on horseback, so he won't
arrive for about a week."
"There is more land a mile up river from us. I'll tell him when he
comes. I bought four cases of dynamite, blasting caps, and some rock
drills, figuring we hit rock too hard to dig when we get above the
high bank with the ditch", Jake told me, too. From talking before I
knew the dirt below the bank was what had washed down the river in
past floods. It was good dirt to farm and rarely had rocks in it. The
slope down to the river was a low grade. Near the river it dropped
sharply at two lower banks above the water. The trees lined the lower
banks with only grass on the slope we were going to turn into fields.
Above the bank, places might only have a thin layer of soil covering a
solid layer of rock which we couldn't gage until we started digging
there. Jake stayed with us and helped for the remainder of the
afternoon. We used a deep plough blade to break the dirt up and came
behind with a drag box to move the loose dirt out of the ditch. Old
Jack pulled the plough and our wagon team pulled the box. Hawk and
Luis led the animals and the rest of us did shovel work, a task very
unfamiliar to the young Comanche but they picked it up quick.
"Hey Swift", Jake hollered to him, "You look just like a cowboy with
your hair tucked under that hat." Jake gave him a thumbs up, and then
he rubbed his crotch. "A big dicked Mexican cowboy."
"Vaquero", Luis corrected him. "And I got an inch more hanging than
any of you. We all have big dicks if you'd seen how small most of the
men in town are. I seen plenty of the skinny little pissers and I
know."
We were picking things up to head to the house when Jake started his
bullshit. We got the plow and the box on higher ground, stacked the
shovels, mounted up, and rode back. It was filthy work and I knew we'd
spend plenty of time playing and cleaning up that evening.
It started raining heavy that night and after three days it was still
coming down. We did the necessary chores. Jake got the still set up
and read up on how to make the mash. He picked one recipe from a book
that came with the still, called 'Our Finest Smooth Irish Single Malt'
and another for a clear smooth corn mash moonshine. We mixed them up
in some big wood tubs, like half barrels but about six feet across.
The rest of the days we spent getting drunk and fucking. We decided to
go into town and get a room while we awaited our money from the land
sale. Luis and the Comanche would have to stay home. Hotels didn't let
rooms to Mexicans or Indians. The wagon bogged down a hundred yards
from the barn, so we led the team horses and Old Jack with pack frames
to carry home the load. We went armed to the teeth. We'd be carrying a
lot of gold home. The horses could navigate in the grassland beside
the dirt track and stay out of the mud.
The streets in town were a river of mud. All the shops in down town
had covered sidewalks and merchants had placed planks between
buildings on both sides of the main street, but crossing the street
was hell. We liveried our horses and got two adjoining rooms at the
hotel. Then we went to Wells Fargo to alert them we were in town and
wanted to be notified when our shipment came in. They telegraphed and
said it was due the next day on the train. We decided to walk the
storefronts and see what the town had to offer.
"How much did your friend get for his two sections?", Jake asked Dan.
"It was all cleared field and only a little pasture that his
grandfather operated for forty years. He got the prime price, forty
dollars an acre and his brother's wife paid it in gold. Her family
were slave holders and cotton planters. They held their fortune in
gold through the Civil War and didn't loose a cent. He's sending it
shipped with our money by Wells Fargo."
Jake calculated in his head a minute. "Let's go talk to the land
broker first", he declared. "The broker is the bank president and he's
a major investor in the railroad, too. They are strapped for cash to
finish building track and land rich. I got what I bought a few days
ago at five cents an acre, same as last fall, and two free acres for
every one I bought if I paid in gold."
"What's your friends name?", Jake asked as we sat at the bankers desk.
"Matt Foster", Dan replied.
"Can you have the papers drawn up for this property in the name of
Matt Foster by tomorrow and have a few other pieces for him to
consider?", Jake asked the banker.
"Certainly, Mr. Pearson", the banker answered, "I'll have everything
ready by morning and I look forward to seeing you after the train
arrives." We all shook his hand and went on to the surveyor's office.
Jake arranged for surveying and fencing right then, ours was already
paid for in advance. We ate a fine meal and shopped the rest of the
afternoon. It was too wet to really carry anything and the pack
animals would be carrying gold. All we bought was more ingredients for
the still and to make some home brew. "When I came here with Paw-paw
as a kid there was only a log cabin here for a courthouse. There was
one store and a big ranch to the north east. There might have been
fifty people living here at the time", Jake commented. Jake persuaded
us to order some farm implements, so we ordered them. We spotted three
gold wedding bands in a shop window that had a familiar look. They
held my mom and grandmother's inscriptions on the inside of the bands.
Jake bought them on the condition the storekeeper tell him who sold
the rings to him.
"Oh yeah", Jake replied when told the name, "He built fence last year
and is coming back to build more with the survey crew when it dries up
some. If I see him, I'll ask him why he parted with them. They have
inscriptions inside the band and must have belonged to someone dear."
"We'll deal with this when the crew is fencing", Jake assured me when
we got outside. We ate a nice Mexican meal for supper and carried a
bottle back to our rooms. The train arrived at nine the next morning
and we met it at the station along with several Wells Fargo men. Our
horses were already inside the back of Wells Fargo's livery beside
their office, packed with what we'd bought. To our surprise, Matt was
on the train with three companions and they had horses in one of the
cars.
They had four mounts and two wagon teams which we saddled and took
down the back street to the rear entrance and tied up. It was raining
a frog drownder and the streets were empty. We were packing the gold
under the pack frames with a blanket covering it and our purchases on
top. Jake kept back enough gold to take care of our business from
Matt's bags, explaining to him what we were doing. "My cousins have a
thousand dollars each to buy land, too", he explained. Jake reached in
some bags to take more out.
"Six thousand covers your land", Jake stated, "I'll match their
thousand each if you will and we'll get this business settled."
Jake sent two of them to buy revolvers and repeater rifles,
ammunition, and rain slickers for each of us and to cover the packs.
He and Matt went three doors down to the bank while we got the animals
loaded. When everyone had returned, we donned our slickers and made
our way down some back streets to the edge of town. The lesser used
streets weren't so muddy and there were fewer eyes to notice us as we
passed.
The heavy rain made it impossible to see very far. There were no dust
clouds stirred up by horses. The sound was muffled to where we
couldn't even converse as we rode. We had to be constantly aware until
we reached the safety of the ranch.
"We'll have to saddle soap all this tack and our saddles this
afternoon", Jake dictated once we were in our barn. We carried their
bags and the gold to the house leaving everything else to move later.
Our clothes were soaked so we shed them and hung them up on the
porch. What Matt and his cousins had in leather satchels remained dry
but Jake, Dan, and me had to get dry clothes inside. With the heavy
rain, Luis and the Comanche hadn't heard us come up on the porch. They
were passing a bottle and playing dominoes at the kitchen table. The
Indians wore loin pouches and Luis had on some baggy drawers. Hawk ran
out on the porch and picked up each man hugging him and lifting him by
the cheeks of his ass.
"Holy shit!", I heard Matt yell from the bedroom. This was going to
get interesting.
(continued in chapter three)
Short Grass Prairie
CHAPTER THREE
As I said, things were getting very interesting. We dressed like Luis,
just throwing on some loose drawers and were back in the kitchen in a
moment. Introductions were made all around. The Foster boys were
Travis and Trace, identical twins, and Chance, all of them Matt's
first cousins. Actually, their dads had all married sisters and the
resemblance was astonishing. All four had medium auburn red hair,
almost a deep honey color, and were freckled from head to toe with
pale blue eyes. They quickly shed the denims they'd put on and were
down to their drawers, too.
Jake took care of business first, laying out what had been bought and
what it had cost. He'd decided that between us we'd stake them by
buying Matt's cousins heifers to stock their land after it was fenced.
We'd supply the bulls and we'd be repaid from their first two years
sales. They'd need barns and lots built, but we had enough housing for
everyone to live here right now. The catch was we'd work all the
ranches as a team and what was cheaper hired out would add to what
they owed when we settled up Jake had bought land for Luis and the
four Comanche men now sharing our lives and they would be stocked and
built to match what we had.
"That's a lot of land for one ranch", Chance remarked.
"Well, this is not Milam County where you can graze one head to the
acre", Jake replied. "It's one head to ten acres and we don't graze
heavier than one head to twenty acres. It can go without raining for
two or three years or grasshoppers can eat you down to the dirt. The
price of cattle can drop to nothing and you still have to get by.
Think of it like dressing for a day outside here in Texas. The morning
might be fair, or it might be cold as a witches teat. You can always
shed some clothes to cool off, but if you roam far from home, you
can't for the life of you, pull more clothes out of the sky."
Luis had a variety of Mexican fare prepared, so we all ate dinner. The
meal had a sample of our first cheese, a sharp rat cheese, and a
Mexican goat cheese Luis tried his hand at. After eating, we set up my
mom's bed in what had been her sewing room because we were short on
sleeping room. The big bed had replaced her bed in large bedroom. We
settled in to get acquainted until the rain stopped. It didn't stop
raining for another week.
Swift started in on Matt to be circumcised sine the other Fosters were
all cut. He ran his finger under Matt's foreskin and stuck his finger
in Matt's mouth. He got pretty drunk and agreed to let Dan take care
of it, but bitched and moaned for days afterward about it hurting.
Dan's delicate work doing the cut and golden seal salve sped the
healing. We all agreed to do any frisky business in private so we
wouldn't give him a hardon, too.
We'd done everything we could think of inside while it rained and were
at the point of getting cabin fever when the sun finally came out.
Jake had the still running on the first batch and the ice house making
ice. It wasn't a big machine. There was a small steam engine with a
boiler and a tank filled with ammonia. Somehow the ammonia did the
cooling and as far as I could tell, the engine mostly turned a fan to
move the cooled air around. Jake understood how it worked, I didn't
need to. Dan got the porches on the other two houses screened in. The
Comanche had done a lot of leather work and beading. Luis had made
more cheese. I boxed up all my grandmothers' things and put them in
the attic thinking we might need to move to one of the larger houses.
The Taylor house was the best choice because it had more bedrooms. It
had a sitting room with windows on three sides to catch the breeze and
both grandmothers had fine leather covered furniture, both being
married for many years. My mom had been a newlywed moving west and her
furnishings were basic. Granddad Taylor being a preacher had an
upright piano and a pump organ, the tools of his trade aside from the
good book. I'd learned to play as had Jake, when we were younger, but
we'd all lived in the small house since the men had left to go to war.
The Fosters pitched in and tended the stock in the barns and lent a
helping hand wherever needed. Both bitches had pups that week, too. We
had fifteen new pups and only one girl in the lot.
Swift and I kept gravitating toward each other as a couple. He was
just so flirtatious I couldn't resist his advances. Beneath his cocky
manner I think he needed someone devoted to him, to give his whole
self to. When Jake, Dan, and the Fosters went back to town to finish
their business there, I had no reason or desire to go and decided to
spend the day with Swift. He'd made me some loin pouches while doing
leather work. I had mine modified to have two leather thongs going up
to the waist strap because the single strand up my butt crack bothered
me. We mounted his horse, riding together with just a blanket and only
wearing pouches. We rode toward the river, knowing our ditch would be
too muddy to work, just to look at the flow.
Swift was pressed back into me as we rode and I responded to our
contact. He slowed the horse, reached back, and passing me a small tin
of the udder balm telling me to put my dick inside him. I didn't
hesitate. Udder balm had proven to be a great lubricant that soaked
into the skin eventually and didn't need to be washed off. I handed
him the tin and we rode on. The motion of the horse while inside his
ass was fantastic. We'd move apart slightly and come together again to
intensify the feeling, but it was great. He heard my moans and felt me
throbbing as I came and when I was finished he stopped the horse,
jumped down, and remounted behind me. He slid into me easily with the
help of some balm and we rode on. He leaned across my shoulder reining
the horse and I clung to the horse's mane. I felt where Swift had
spurted across the horse's neck. I added to it three times before he
gave his shout of release and pulled himself out of me.
The river was half way up to the high bank. No treetops were visible.
Our ditch wasn't muddy, it was submerged. The plow, box and shovels
were safe above the high bank and we rode on upstream. The stream from
the spring hadn't been very deep but the first creek we came to was a
rushing torrent and we turned back toward the ranch. A creek flowed
through the winter camp and four more flowed to the river before you
could reach our eastern fence line. Jake and the men had turned back,
too, and were home when we returned. They would have had other creeks
to cross on the way to town and a large bayou, nearly a river, flowed
just east of town. The town might be flooded, too. All our fences had
swinging water gap gates that let limbs or debris pass and dropped to
close the gap after the water receded. Each one would need checking
and repairing so the fences would hold our stock tight. We might have
a few weeks work to attend to once the water passed downstream.
Luis had turned all the foul out to graze on the wet grass after we'd
left. The peacocks were strutting with their tail fans spread wide.
The swan was chasing it's mate around in a frisky mood. "Well, look at
that!", I pointed for Swift to see, "His old dick is nearly as big as
mine. You know swans are the only birds with dicks don't you?"
Swift howled with laughter. "I never seen a bird like this", he
declared, and called to the others to come and see. They ran out and
got a kick out of seeing the swan, too. We'd finished getting the
Taylor house ready the day before and they were moving their things
into the bigger house. Jake elected to stay in the smaller house with
Luis because his bed was too big to move. The cooking would continue
there for now, too, until the heat made us move it to the separate
kitchen house. We'd eat in the big house, though, because it had a
larger table that would seat everyone.
Jake brought in a jug of the first batch of whiskey and a bucket of
broken ice he sat the jug in. We all got glasses to sample it and it
was some fine stuff. We were in the big house. Trace took his glass to
the piano and started playing some bar room or honkey tonk tunes. "If
we're going to drink , we may as well get in the mood", he roared.
Travis, Chance, and Dan joined in singing along but Jake and I hadn't
ever heard the songs. "The school teacher taught me a bunch of songs
when I stayed around late to suck his dick. Mama would have beat my
ass if she knew I could play them or the other things I was up to.
Chance and Travis learned a few the same way. He was cute and had a
big old dick."
"Yeah and his ass was tight enough to squeeze your dick off if he had
a mind to do it", Chance added. "He didn't know how to work it like
Tanner, though". Chance gave Tanner a big smile and a wink.
We had lunch and continued to play music through the afternoon and
evening. Gradually everyone at least tried to join in. Granddad Taylor
and Paw-Paw had a few other instruments I found when I was packing
things away. Some I wasn't familiar with. I'd put them all on shelves
and a table beside the piano with our other instruments nearby. Trace
started naming them and showing how they were played. "Somewhere there
was an Irishman in the woodpile", he declared. Irish weren't thought
of favorably. Firstly, most were Catholic which was nearly as bad as a
devil worshipper, or so it was said. Secondly, they loved to drink and
sing, and dance and would stop working at the drop of a hat to do any
of the three. Usually, it was thought they did all three and were
considered lazy drunks. We were doing exactly that, I thought to
myself.
"These are fifes", Trace displayed and blew out a little tune. "And
these are Pan pipes", he demonstrated similarly. Some drumheads on
hoops and some with bangles that rang out a sparkling sound, he called
tambours and tambourines, showing how to use them. One he called an
Irish harp and three beside it he called autoharps. Two he called
fiddles or violins that had strings and a bow, but no frets, and a
larger similar one he called a viola. Several with four strings each,
he called dulcimers and said they were played lying in across your
lap. Two he said were bagpipes with a foot bellows to fill an air bag
and another you had to blow up. The last he hadn't seen before but
showed how he thought it was played. It had small brass plates that
rang out different notes and he played it with a drum striker. "I'm
surprised there aren't any horns", he said at the last.
Tanner took an interest in the pump pipes. They had very deep tones
but the pipe itself was wood and fitted into a connecting piece. He
made Indian flutes and various calls he whittled. He took one of his
flutes and whittled the mouth until it fit the connector, and smiled.
Trace showed him how to hold the bag under his arm and squeeze it to
force air our, and how to pump the bag full. When he started, the same
higher pitch tones he played with his mouth sounded through the room.
Taylor and Hawk took to the drumheads and tambourines, something more
familiar to them. What started as a cacophony of disharmony and
conflicting rhythms turned from noise into melody.
I was drawn to the little push button accordion and it was a breeze to
master. Dan had played the fiddle a little. He started out sounding
like a cat being skinned alive but got it singing for him well enough
to do. Hell, when you drink enough, almost everything sounds good.
It took several more days for things to dry out. We checked the herds
we could get to and found two newborn calves that had died with their
mothers standing guard over the bodies. The creeks had gone down. The
river was at the second bank and our ditch was visible but full of
water. Jake, Dan, and the Fosters had made the trip to town that
morning. Swift and I took Old Jack with us and started checking water
gaps and the fence lines. Luis and the other Comanche went to check
the herds.
We found a few water gaps that we had to clear but only in the lower
pastures nearer the river. Grass wouldn't block the water gap gates.
Brush or trees would. We didn't check cross fences between pastures,
just perimeter fences and those along the stock lanes we used to move
the cattle. The way we had it fenced was so we could graze a piece of
pasture hard and move the cows to let that pasture regrow. If drought
hit, we'd have a lot of ungrazed land that would sustain the herds on
dry grass. It was a buffer. All open grazing left you nothing for your
cattle to eat if drought hit. Open range ranchers could end up selling
their stock for a song rather than loosing everything. We ate lunch
we'd brought along.
I decided to pay a visit to the ranch on our west side that wasn't
fenced yet. We were in cowboy garb and Swift had his hair under his
hat, so we rode up to the house. The wife and a little girl about five
came out to greet us and then the man joined us. Their house was tiny.
He had a small pole barn and no lots. None of his place was fenced and
I guessed he had fifty head of cattle or less. Whatever money he'd
had, he'd spent on the land and hadn't left enough to buy stock where
he could make a living. It made me kind of sad.
His place was ten sections that wouldn't completely connect ours to
the Foster's, but it would give us a corridor. I offered him a dollar
an acre, mostly out of pity, if he'd sell out and buy another place.
His eyes got as big as saucers and he agreed immediately. It was
twenty times what he'd paid. I told him I'd bring the money the next
day and he could take as long as he needed to move after he found a
place. I'd meet him in town at that time to sign all the papers. We
sealed the deal with a handshake and Swift and I rode home.
Jake was really excited when I gave him the news. "You have a good
heart, Jim", Jake told me. "We could have haggled with him for a lower
price but we ain't hurting for money. He'll be all set up now and
you'll have a friend for life."
Jake went with me the next day. He advised him to see the banker and
told him what we'd gotten paying in gold. We had a long talk, mostly
Jake giving him advice on how to spend his money, building a house,
barns, lots, and fencing, and buying enough stock to make a decent
living. He told him to save at least half for hard times, too. The
banker would take care of changing his deed over to us and we'd sign
and file it on our next trip to town. They had the wagon hitched up
and both the wife and little girl were dressed in their Sunday best
when we left for home.
It was a week before Jake went into town again. He carried brand
patterns for each of us to register and have made by a blacksmith
while he was there. I guess he had a lot to do and was gone for three
days. He returned with a wagon train behind him hauling things I
didn't know we'd ordered and some I was aware of. I could tell that
part of it was galvanized tanks for the windmills and some more
windmills. There was farm equipment, too. Gadgets were Jakes thing and
I didn't give it any more thought. The freight haulers unloaded it in
the yard near the barn because it was too much to put inside.
We'd been working on the ditch again and when we'd gotten about fifty
feet past the edge of the high bank we were in deep soil again. It had
taken twenty sticks of dynamite to break the rock out for that edge of
the bank and those next thirty feet or so. One implement he'd bought
was a grader on four wheels with an eight foot wide blade that could
adjust in height, slope, and angle, or in three ways relative to the
ground beneath it. The wheels were about six feet in diameter of solid
iron and had spikes on them to prevent them from slipping. We hitched
it up with two teams and drove it to the ditch.
The grader bit off a depth of dirt depending on how it was adjusted
and mounded it to one side creating a berm. Each pass made the ditch
deeper and a move to the side made it wider. We had several miles of
ditch to cut and Jake had us make a few passes in one stretch to see
how it worked. Then he took off to the house and left us to work on
it. We managed to get eight passes down the length of the ditch before
we stopped for lunch. We'd stopped each time we came to a creek and
started again on the opposite side, sometimes searching for a while to
find an easy path to get the grader across to the other side. The
creeks would have to be dammed. The ditch was now about four feet deep
and ten feet wide.
We took Old Jack and the other team back to the house with us, leaving
the two teams on tethers to graze while we were gone. Travis and
Taylor had kind of paired up. They agreed to go back down and run the
grader after lunch and the rest of us would do other jobs. Jake wanted
the ditch ten feet deep and twenty feet wide if it could be done.
Lumber and some other things had been delivered during the morning.
Chance and Jake were going to build wooden forms to pour concrete
making the gates that could be opened to release water from the ditch.
We bought Portland cement in bags to mix the concrete, but limestone
was the only rock around. Portland was made from limestone burned and
powdered as the main component. Two more teams were left during the
morning delivery along with two wagons Jake bought.
Trace, Tanner, Swift, and I were going to take a cutter and a rake to
the open pasture surrounding the winter camp and cut hay. The rake
would follow behind and pull the cut grass into a long pile. After it
dried in a day or two, we'd use a bailing machine that would form
bales and bind them with twine powered by the forward motion of the
machine to stack in the hayloft. That left Dan. Matt, and Luis to move
things into the barn and help Chance and Jake if they finished.
When the winter grain was ripe, we'd use the same cutter and rake on
it but would haul wagon loads to a thrasher which separated the grain
from the chaff. Then we'd bail what we could of the chaff. A horse
walked a treadmill on the thrasher to power it. I didn't see how we
could use this equipment for corn but it looked like it would work on
maize.
Hawk was going to pick the garden, do chores, and get supper fixed.
He'd killed a young goat and had it cooking outside over a pit. It was
a long day when everyone got in and we were all in bed soon after we
ate.
We found several gravel and sand bars in the creek beds which were
easier to work than climbing the steep bank out of the river bed. We
had to build the dams, and the gates for the ditches. We reused the
lumber frames, just moving them to the next location, for each gate.
The dams were trickier. There was still some flow down the creeks and
we built diversion channels we could convert to flood gates to open if
it flooded again. That let us get forms in place to pour the concrete
dams. We'd blasted down to rock to give the dams a firm foundation. We
built bridges across each creek, too, but just concrete supports and
timber road that could be replaced if it washed out. We had a steel
form for making concrete culvert pipe that would let us cross the
smaller ditches without tearing it up, but the big ditch needed three
bridges for access to the fields. The bridge on the west end of the
ditch would lead down to the river where we'd build a low water
crossing dam that would hold river water at a higher level than the
ditch allowing us to open a gate releasing water from the river into
the ditch. We'd build the crossing dam in August when the river
stopped flowing. The site was already a natural gravel bar that formed
a rapids when the flow was high. We would blast it out first, too and
rough pour the concrete with no forms, setting culvert pipe near the
top so it could be crossed without getting wet when the flow was slow.
The grain ripened in late May and the harvest was a breeze using the
thrasher. The whole loft was filled with hay bales then, too. The corn
and maize wouldn't ripen until August or September. Canning had gone
well, too, and we had a lot of food put up for winter, more than we
could use in several winters.
The surveyors arrived about the time the grain ripened. Jake and I dug
a deep grave behind the house and had a young pecan sapling about
eight feet tall to plant on top of it. We spied the man who'd sold the
rings working with another man digging post holes. Riding within
hearing distance I started yelling at Jake, "You paid good gold for
cattle that may die since it hasn't rained a drop in over a month!",
and we bickered back and forth riding away from them toward town. We
stopped near a grove of trees and watched. They collected a third
companion, made some excuse to the foreman, and rode off, turning
after a while toward our ranch house. All our men they knew of were at
the river working. Hawk and the Comanche were waiting at the house.
They had them tied up when we arrived. A little Indian torture and
threats of scalping them alive loosened their tongues. They each
blamed the others, admitting to killing my mom and grandmothers.
We slit their throats and buried them naked, planting the tree on top.
We burned their clothes and saddles, saved the guns to put in the next
concrete pour, and branded their horses with a US Army brand. Only the
army branded horses. Hawk put halters on the horses and led them north
west, releasing them outside our fence. We knew someone would return
them to the army fort in San Angelo called Fort Concho, for a small
reward and all traces of the men would be gone. It was an eye for an
eye, a tooth for a tooth and frontier justice. We never spoke of it
again.
The irrigated fields were narrow strips from thirty to a hundred feet
wide running parallel to the ditch. Each plot had to be nearly level.
A lot of small ditches and gates controlled the flow into the level
plots. We were cleaning out the race where the river met the gate into
the big ditch, the last step other than building the low water
crossing dam. Jake and I carried four jugs of our fine whiskey back
from burying the killers. I don't think our absence was noticed. Jake
rode across and invited the crew across to watch the opening of that
gate, filling the ditch, and offered them some whiskey to help us
celebrate. The entire crew rode across to witness the event and
praised the whiskey as the best they'd ever had. We left them two jugs
when we headed home.
Taylor was the odd man out. Luis had bedded down with Hawk, something
that had probably been going on since he was with the Comanche. Jake
was solitary for a few weeks and Chance took a liking to him. Travis
had found himself a cowboy in town named Bob Greer, leaving Taylor
alone. Not long after that, Bob Greer moved to the ranch to be with
Travis. Trace and Tanner paired up. That left us all paired up except
Taylor. We'd been at a lull since finishing the ditch, Taylor was off
riding one day. He came home with a straw haired cowboy he said he
found on the road and declared he was keeping him. The guys name was
Rich Langston. He was broke, hungry, and looking for work. "He's got
a shiny knob and sucks dick real good", Taylor told us. Rich turned
bright red.
"Don't fret about it, Rich", I told him, "We'd all done that or had
one up our butt more than a few times."
Rich wasn't a real big guy. He was about five foot eight but matched
the rest of us with a dick about eight inches long and a little larger
around than a full fist. He had no explanation for being circumcised
and had been orphaned at nine. He never went to school and couldn't
sign his own name. He'd worked at a livery for the stage line until he
was thirteen and tried to cowboy since then. "Something about me ain't
made right for a woman", he said, "I paid a whore once and had to
think of this cowboy I liked to get hard, but when I looked at her
tits it went soft. I couldn't do a damn thing." As it turned out, he
was just sixteen. He might grow taller yet.
In early September, we were all down near the river doing some finish
work on the irrigated plots. We were planting some in fall grain and
had stopped for lunch under the shade of the big pecans laying in tall
grass as we ate. I had a basket of those sweet brown turkey figs, some
early pears and apples. We'd already eaten but the fruit was desert.
I'd take a fig and run it along Swift's belly, dipping it in the sweat
puddled in his belly button. I'd swallow one and feed an undipped one
into Swift's mouth. Then I'd eat another one.
"That's sticky", Swift complained, "Lick up the juice or ants will be
crawling all over me." I licked him clean lingering a bit, plunging my
tongue in his dented button and swirling it around. "Much better", he
told me.
"All right! I can't take any more", Bob exclaimed, sitting beside
Travis, next to us. He pushed Travis on his hands and knees, jerked
down his pants, and said, "I've got to fuck, now!." He slathered
himself and Travis' ass up and began a spiraling gyration of his hips
as he pushed inward. When he was short hair to short hair, he sucked
on and bit into the back of Travis' neck like a stallion rutting a
mare. He did long slow strokes and with his oversize tool, they were
indeed long strokes and done with no shyness at all. Travis fertilized
the grass beneath him and Bob withdrew, doing his last strokes sliding
the length of Travis' crack, finally splattering the whole of his back
with sweet spooge. We were hidden in the canopy of the trees out of
sight. Some of the men were sleeping and the few minutes this act of
pleasure consumed was mostly unnoticed. Swift and I couldn't avoid the
view if we'd wanted to.
"How long are we working today?", Swift asked. "I want to get home and
do what they just did."
"I guess we could leave now if you want", I answered, "I don't think
we'd be missed much." I knew Old Jack would spoil our escape so I
handed him a fist full of sweet nettle passing by to mount our horses.
It worked.
We had to harvest the corn the same as always. Jake had a sheller you
dropped husked ears into and cranked. Then it spit out the dried
kernels to bag or put up in a bin, but none of the equipment was
useful harvesting it. We built the low water crossing dam in two weeks
with everyone working. It would hold water a good six feet higher than
the gravel bar had done naturally and the gate was built right to work
with the extra depth. We'd angled the road down to the crossing and on
the far side so a wagon wouldn't have any trouble getting up or down
at the low grade. Harvesting the maize was the same as the corn. The
stalks were too thick for the cutter and even the round little seeds
weren't the right shape to go through the thrasher. Where we'd fed the
corn stalks to the pigs in past years, Jake had us chop the maize and
corn stalks up and mix them with molasses for silage. It made them
ferment and they smelled really good. We took the ribbon cane and put
it through Paw-Paw's press to get the juice out. It cooked down to
some sweet syrup that way. We made silage from the pressed cane
stalks, too.
The fence crew and surveyors were still at work come the end of
September. We'd had them put in the cross fencing to divide the
pastures up and make stock lanes. Wells were in to provide water for
every pasture and troughs were built. All our winter grain was up and
growing. A week after the fencing crew left in early October we did
the fall roundup and sold twelve hundred two year old steers at
fifteen dollars each. Jake got a special rate from the railroad
because cars usually arrived empty, and bought five thousand heifers
to be shipped in to us over a three week period. Heifers weighed about
three hundred pounds each at a year old, where steers weighed about
twelve hundred and cattle are sold by the weight on the hoof. Fifteen
dollars a head was considered the price for the average weight of a
finished steer. Heifers sold at a lower price per pound, too, and we
more or less swapped stock. We paid out of pocket for bulls shipped in
from Iowa, more pure bred Angus like the rest. We worked some hard
days for those three weeks. We had to brand them all once we got them
to the ranch, and move them to pasture. There wasn't space in the lots
to hold all of them. They wore ruts around the fence lines looking for
an escape.
With the arrival of the Sand Hill Cranes, we knew the buffalo and the
Comanche wouldn't be far behind. This year a few hundred whooping
cranes followed the sand hills and paid us a visit. Usually they flew
a different path. No buffalo came. Thirty of the hundred Comanche had
starved to death. Hunters killed off herds for the hides and left the
carcasses to rot. This one summer saw most of the buffalo killed. Two
very young boys were left orphaned and one old woman in her fifties
had no kin left. We took them in. The woman agreed to care for the
boys and Matt's sons, so Matt took the train and brought his boys
home.
All of us wrestled that damn big bed into the Taylor house and Jake
gave up the little house to Dan and Matt. The old woman took the
sewing room, the babies took one bedroom, and the orphaned boys took
the other.
I'd never known Matt's son's names and when I asked he said, "Peanut
and Tiny", but finally told the truth and they were each named for a
grandfather. One was named Harlan and the other was Rufus, but even
Matt couldn't tell them apart yet. He had a blue leather band for
Harlan's ankle and a red one for Rufus. With Swift translating, he
threatened the old woman's life if she mixed them up. She just pointed
to my shoulder tattoo and the problem was solved. They got tattoos but
Rufus' was yellow on the thumb side of the hand and the Harlan's was
the opposite.
The old woman was called Muni but none of the Comanche knew what it
meant. It turned out she was Kiowa from farther east and had been
bought as a bride when she was a young woman. That explained why she
had no kin. The boys, we were told, had no names now since they were
orphans. Jake named one Sam Pearson after Paw-Paw. I named the other
boy Nate Taylor after my granddad Taylor. Swift was pleased we had a
son. He spent time most days playing with the two, just as I did.
We cut the Comanche out three hundred bred heifers and gave them year
old bulls but told them if they needed meat we'd bring them steers,
that these were for breeding, not eating. Luis showed them the buffalo
calves that were now yearlings to give them some hope because they
grieved as much for the buffalo as they did for their loved ones who'd
died. We'd planted them a winter garden as we did the year before and
soon everyone was fattening up again. Without the buffalo they would
never hunt the plains again. This would be their home.
Only God understands why things happen as they do. This was a winter
of sickness. First came measles, then the influenza, and last came
chicken pox. None of the white men or Luis caught any of them but
because I was born in isolation out here and Jake had already had all
three, I caught each one. I think all the new settlers brought the
sickness with them. My cases were mild and short in duration. Muni
didn't catch anything either. Both Sam and Nate had mild cases like
mine, but Hawk, Swift, Tanner, and Taylor nearly died every time. Only
constant nursing got them through it. The Black Hand Band fared far
worse. In the end only six women, four children, and ten men remained.
The remainder we put to rest on their holy ground across the river
near the painted rocks. Comanche don't bury their dead but raised them
up on scaffolding to touch the sky. We did it their way.
Surveys mark off land in squares and in nature there are no straight
lines, only curves and angles. We spent most of the next year trying
to teach the remaining Comanche to farm and ranch. Their lives never
before included either. Neither could we have adapted easily to a life
obtaining all our sustenance from what nature provided. Sure, Hawk,
Swift, Tanner, and Taylor had adapted but they had learned by
immersion. They learned English and saw what we did and what we gained
from our efforts. Old Muni thought she'd died and gone to heaven. She
couldn't cook a thing anyone, even Comanche, could stomach. She'd help
clean, wash dishes or clothes, but all she really did was care for the
boys and sit on her butt doing beadwork. She'd watch us cook, praising
the food to no end and say she'd try to learn but her talent with food
lay in eating. She and our warriors had become blended Americans with
native roots but we all were the straight line and the Comanche at
winter camp were the curve.
We helped them at calving time because all their cows were heifers who
were first time mothers. We had four thousand of those ourselves. The
high survival rate was due more to the wide hips of Angus blooded cows
than to any effort on our part. They had an excess of horses due to
their reduced numbers so we traded some for teams to pull a plow or a
wagon, helped them do their spring planting, and bought them supplies
they needed.
Spring roundup saw us sell sixteen hundred steers and in the fall it
was up to two thousand. The price was up to twenty dollars a head as
eastern bellies were filled by western cattle. Our personal
relationships grew more comfortable and our work load grew smaller. We
dug a ditch on the opposite bank that summer and found several more
places for future ditches. What we grew in the irrigated fields was
grass and for the most part, we didn't irrigate. The rains had been
steady and it was only dry in august. The dairy herd was up to twenty
four producing cows. Most of the milk was made into cheese and Rich
was driving a boxed in wagon selling cheese all around the area. We
didn't need more dairy cattle. Growing grain or vegetables in excess
of our needs wasn't profitable. Cattle was the only money maker. The
goats, sheep, and hogs were the same. Americans didn't eat much goat
or sheep and our climate was too warm for wool. Both hogs and chickens
could be raised on very small farms where the farmer would beat your
price to make a penny. We could have made a fortune from our whiskey
but preferred to have something special that no one else could obtain.
It wouldn't have helped our reputation to sell liquor when all our
neighbors were tea totaling fundamentalist prohibitionists. Only the
cowboys and the scoundrels drank.
In the fall, an army patrol from Fort Concho came by. We explained the
situation with the Comanche. They had land and could stay. Their
numbers were too small to concern the troops. If they wanted to be
with their tribe, get a share of reservation land, and be listed on
the rolls, they had to at least go to the reservation. Land there
would be theirs forever and what they had here could be lost. After
weeks of discussion two braves elected to stay with us and the rest
wanted to join the other Comanche. Jake wrote letters to the Indian
Agent providing funds to fence and equip their land and have houses
built. When it was ready to occupy, their stock, including chickens,
goats, sheep, and hogs and all the farm equipment they would need and
their possessions were loaded in cattle cars and shipped to the
reservation by the new rail line that traveled north. Jake, Matt, Dan,
Luis, Bob and the Fosters went along, but the Comanche and Luis had to
ride with the animals. Jake arranged for reservation land held by our
Comanche at home, Sam, Nate, and Luis, to be fenced a made ready to
receive herds. He hired a man there to manage the land and arriving
herds in their absence. Each allotment came to three thousand acres
but with all the recent deaths nearly two thirds of the Comanche
reservation lands went unclaimed. Only a few stragglers and resistors
remained roaming freely across the plains. They were gone a month
getting them settled in and rode home on their horses. They couldn't
write us letters and only God would know how things worked out.
It was a long month of waiting until the men returned from the
reservation. We had a great celebration when they rode in. Hawk
butchered a pig and pit roasted it until the meat was falling off the
bones. I made potato salad and Rich made pies. We'd never been able to
make crust that worked but somewhere in his experience growing up,
Rich had learned. He said his secret was using ice water and working
the dough as little as possible. They'd been caught in very cold
weather that hadn't come this far south and had fleece lined heavy
winter coats. They brought each of us a coat in the same style. That
included the braves who stayed behind, the boys, and old Muni. The
braves took the last name Comacho and one took Lance as his first
name. The second man took Archer shortened to Arch as his. Jake
announced he had gotten all the Comacho men along with Sam and Nate,
and Luis on the rolls should they ever decide to live among the
Comanche again and told them of their allotments. Arch shot a big wild
tom turkey, which he said had more flavor than our domestic kind, and
roasted it. We made cornbread stuffing to go with it and had canned
vegetables and some fresh ones from the winter garden. It was nearly
Christmas then and they'd missed Thanksgiving.
I'd been teaching Sam and Nate their numbers and letters but the
Comanche and Rich took as much interest in learning them as the little
boys, so we'd had school all day most days over the last month. Rich
had the advantage that he could count money already so he knew the
names of the numbers, just not how to write the symbols. Seeing little
Sam who was nearly four and little Nate who was just now three,
reading words out of a book, pushed the rest to learn quickly. There
were many books between the three houses shelves, creating a large
library of sorts. There were enough copies of school primers for two
to share and read the printed words as one of them spoke the words.
Even Muni got into it while holding the books for Sam and Nate. In
just that month all of them had learned the basic skills of reading
and most importantly how to use a dictionary to see how a word was
pronounced and what it meant. Jake and I had talked in the past and
neither of us remembered learning to read, like we'd just always known
how, but Jake remembered watching me learn it. We'd learned to read
sheet music the same way, not remembering a time we couldn't. I hoped
it worked the same for the boys.
After we'd eaten Sam climbed up in Jake's lap with his book and said,
"Watch me daddy", and he read from the book, turning the pages until
he reached the end of the first story. Tears were streaming down Jakes
cheeks and I was sure he was going to bawl, but he didn't, he just
told Sam how good he was doing. Rufus and Harlan weren't two yet and
only said a few words but Sam and Nate swore they'd teach them to
read.
Muni took the boys by their hands and led them back to the little
house to bathe and be put to bed. We broke out the jug. I'd found some
sheet music and had Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata sitting on the piano
where I'd tried picking it out. Trace sat down and played it with such
delicacy it sounded like a different piece. He rose and sat on the
couch next to Tanner. Bob had always been really quiet, except for
that incident by the river. He was tall and black headed with brown
eyes almost in a slit between his brow and high cheeks. I guess he'd
opened up during the trip and was talking as much as anyone now.
"Bob got me and Travis mixed up one night", Trace started saying, "He
crawled in bed with me and gave me some butt by mistake. He's got a
great ass, Tanner, you should give him a ride."
"Thanks for taking care of my man", Tanner responded.
"No problem", Bob shot back, "He can do a good job with that tool of
his. If I didn't have Travis, I wouldn't turn him down for a fuck. I
rolled him over and plowed him good before I realized my mistake."
We drank for a couple of hours relaying the events that transpired
since we'd been apart. The boiler was going most of the time now,
during mid-winter, and the basin in the Taylor house was larger. It
might be a squeeze, but we should all fit, so we stripped and got in
after it filled. This night we could drain some water if it started to
cool down and add more hot water. We brought the jugs and drank more
as we soaked. The shy ones in the group were Lance and Archer who were
a pair themselves. This sharing created and reinforced a bond between
us all.
Through the winter we only had a few chores to do. Peas, fava beans
and chick peas along with greens and broccoli could be picked from the
garden. The stock at the barns and the chickens and foul had to be
tended and fed. The dairy cows had to be milked. If it froze hard,
we'd have to break ice in the pasture troughs so the cows could drink.
If we had snow or ice and could get out to the pastures with a wagon,
we'd put out hay for the herds. Usually ice or snow melted within a
day and the grass could be grazed again. Only rare events held the ice
or snow cover longer and then the stock lanes would be impassable.
The seasons began to pass in rote repetition with the herds growing
larger and the boys getting older. The second winter Muni died. One
morning she just didn't wake up. Not knowing Kiowa custom, we buried
he beside my mom and grandmothers'. The changes that began next
started in eighteen seventy eight when the Yankee carpetbaggers were
thrown out and the traditional Texas Democrats took power again in
state government and the English railroad baron began operating his
ranch.
Old tax laws said only land that was improved was taxed, not counting
fences. Our pasture was natural and uncleared. Only the fields were
taxed. With the change, all property was taxed but at a low rate set
by farmers and ranchers. Most of the tax collected went to pay for
schools and roads, something not done in the past even though it had
been the law since independence from Mexico.
The Englishman started bringing in his people from Scotland, Ireland,
and England. All were protestants and fair complected. His land took
our north and east sides, leaving our road to town passing through it.
We'd left a forty foot set back on the north for a road, but travel
that way would triple the length of a trip to town. The trip north to
the old Comanche winter camp was a long ride in itself. His ranch
dwarfed ours and all of ours combined, was huge. He had more than one
million acres and his people descended like a horde.
Another change that occurred was our county seat moved. All the large
counties were broken up into more smaller ones and our land was now in
three different counties. The old county line had gone north east to
just west of Fort Worth, north west to the south west corner of
Oklahoma territory, east along the mighty Red River, and to a point in
the south near us. It had been larger than many of the states, but not
the largest county in Texas. Four hundred and fifty four counties now
covered the area that was previously only thirty counties. That meant
three separate trips to conduct legal business or pay taxes and the
old country seat was a different jurisdiction, disconnected from us.
The new closest town, just down our road to the old county seat,
wasn't in the same county we any of our land was in, the line was our
property line and the river formed another boundary.
We'd let the dairy cows suckle their calves and only milked one for
our needs for over a year, but the dairy herd was a hundred and twenty
cows and six bulls now. We hadn't driven any steers to sale or shopped
any stores or left the ranch for fear of contracting some disease
since a third of the Europeans had died that first year. The cattle
they brought died in the heat and we wanted to keep our herds disease
free, too, not knowing what they might carry. Their cemeteries held
more dead than we'd had people before they arrived.
With all the cows in fresh and our space filled with cheese from both
cows and Nubian goats, Rich drove the box wagon into the new town of
Leaday. He pulled up in front of the store and seeing a man wearing a
long white apron and a derby hay, he said, "Howdy" and extended his
hand.
"And a good day to you sir", the man answered, first wiping his hand,
then covering his palm with a cloth, he took Rich's hand. To a cowboy
this was the height of insult, not to touch a mans hand with your own.
"I have milk, cheese, and ice for sale if you need any", Rich offered.
"Aye, and let me just wash my hand and offer it to you proper, if you
please", he replied. "I was just handling some messy freight and
didn't want to soil you."
They repeated the handshake and Rich calmed a little. "My family and
me have the place a mile down through the gate at the end of 'our'
road there", Rich stated.
"I've never seen any traffic from that direction, only riders in the
distance across the fence", the merchant told Rich.
"We're a little slow meeting strangers, I guess. We waited to see if
any of you people lived or stayed around, even let the dairy cows go
dry", Rich responded.
"And a pity it is, I'm sure sir. Just how big is this place of yours,
if I might ask?", he inquired.
"Over a hundred sections, near seven hundred thousand acres, sixty
thousand head of pure bred Angus cattle, a few longhorns, some
domesticated buffalo, a dairy of mixed Jersey and Guernsey cows,
Nubian milk goats, Ramboulet sheep, Hampshire and Duroc hogs, a
variety of all types of foul with mostly Buff Orfington chickens
laying double yoker eggs, Morgan draft horses and the best Quarter
horses in Texas if that answers you. We also brew some fine beer and
the best single malt Irish Whiskey you'll find", Rich spit out at him
in succession.
"Might I sample a taste of your single malt?", the man asked. Rich
passed him a jug, popping the cork. He took a sip and responded, "This
is truly the finest day I've seen yet since coming to Texas and your
whiskey would match or beat the best I've had. I'm Sean McCorkle and
it is a great pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir."
"Rich Langston", Rich told him. "We call it the Short Grass Prairie
Ranch, but by rights it's the Pearson-Taylor Ranch in fact. We are all
family and not a hired hand among us, in business here since eighteen
fifty five and native citizens of the Republic Of Texas from before
it's dim association with the United States."
"Well that would be another common point between us sir for we have no
taste for foreign overlords either. Many call us red necks for the
wearing of a red kerchief about our necks in opposition to royal
authority", Sean confided. "The English master here is no better and I
don't serve him, just contract to do business with his hired help."
(continued in chapter four)